Welcome to the New Leaf Book Club
 

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/pi...pictureid=7726

Welcome to the New Leaf Book Club! The purpose of the New Leaf Book Club is to discover, read and discuss new books across a wide spectrum of genres to expand our reading palettes. Our objective is to engage in thoughtful conversation with people of diverse perspectives who share our love of reading within a friendly and inviting community.

We'll be kicking things off on January 1, 2018, with nominations on the theme of A Rainbow of Reading: books with color-full associations. The discussion for the final MobileRead Book Club selection, Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers, will start on January 15, 2018.

We look forward to reading books both well-written and entertaining which appeal to a gamut of tastes, from serious to light. We'd like to have fun with the nominations and encourage lateral thinking. Don't feel, for example, that the first theme is limited to books with a color in a title; that books related to color, have a rainbow theme, an author with a color in his name and so forth are precluded. The only two conditions are books that would appeal to others and books that would make for a lively discussion. That's it! (Well, there are also a few technical conditions that will be addressed in a subsequent post.)

Please consider participating at whatever level is comfortable for you. We're starting with a committed core of readers to which we want to add, but we also welcome droppers-in. Help us make a success of our brand new book club. All questions or comments are welcome.

We're ready to read! Grab your gadget and let's go.

I'm quite looking forward to this. Though I admit, I've struggled with this first theme; there are so many ways I could take it, but finding the _perfect_ book is hard. OTOH, the breadth of the theme (and themes, in general) has allowed me to re-discover all sorts of books I'd not read in years and years and years.

I already have my three nominations cooked up! :D

Hopefully we can really use this as a vehicle to stretch our typical genre-habits and help others discover our own hidden gems.

:gossip:

Hmmmm, intriguing theme, and just looking through my wish-list I found a few that fit. Now on to decide what to nominate :) and I’m looking forward to seeing what others come up with!

For those of us who never participated before, it would help to have a brief description of the basics of how the book club works.

The thread with FAQs and Guidelines should post shortly, but here are the basics:

Nominations will start on first of the month and last for a week; each person has three nominations to be used at will to nominate, second or third any book. Three nominations are needed for a book to make the poll, which is multiple choice and will last for five days. The discussion will start on the 15th of the following month.

We hope many who haven't participated before will take a look and join in. The more participants, the better the discussion. :)

Edit: issybird has this covered, I'm apparently too wordy. :)

I'm working on a FAQ post now that will cover most of this in more detail, it should be up this afternoon, but here are the basics:

On the first of each month we will have a nomination thread and anyone is invited to nominate a book or second/third a previously nominated book that meets the month's theme; January's theme will be A Rainbow of Reading, see issybird's post above and lateral thinking is encouraged. Everyone may do this for up to three different books. Books that receive three total nods will move onto the vote thread which should start on the 8th and lasts for 5 days.

Voting is multiple choice (vote for any books that catch your fancy) and anyone can vote but if you do vote please try to participate in the discussion regardless of which book wins. (Even if you didn't vote for the winning book!)

Discussion will begin on the 15th of the next month, so we will begin discussing the book we choose in January on February 15th.

I've opted to save two of my nominations for seconds, but have decided on a book for my one nomination. Not the one I'd originally intended -- I decided that it was a bit too outright escapist for this first month. But I'm pleased with the one I came up with, and I am really looking forward to seeing what others nominate -- I expect to discover some new favourites.

Can we have members create logos so we can have a vote? I think it would give us a chance to pick something we (overall) like.

Ok, now you're just cranky for the sake of being cranky

And nobody is stopping you from making another one

Go back and reread my message. You caught me mid edit.

Please, use whatever logo you want! And if it's cool enough, I'm sure some of us will ask you to make it publicly available.

FWIW, I made one set VERY quickly, just so we'd have something! But Dazrin came along and did much better, and I'm abandoning my own and going with his. And if you come up with something better, I'll gladly abandon Dazrin's and use yours.

I'd like to see the ideas of anyone who wants to submit something and have the club vote on them.

This!

And, me too!

For what it's worth, I have made a couple more variations than what are in use now, and will be posting them in the FAQ thread this afternoon when I get finished doing some cleanup. I can post a link here directly to that FAQ item if you like.

Edit: Direct link to the FAQ question with the various images posted (last question of the FAQ.)

Dazin, can you make a leaf circuit board with a Reader instead of a pBook?

I wish I could but I don't have the skills for that. My original thought was to have a leaf on an ereader but I couldn't find any good starting points for that (at least not that was legal to use.) These are from a CC0 licensed stock photo that I cropped in a couple different ways and added some text to. If someone does have the skills to make something from scratch I would love for them to come up with something.

Regarding a vote, personally I don't think we really need a vote for this. If someone has something that they like they can feel free to use it. If enough people like it, I will add it to the FAQ thread. I'm not sure what the floor is for that, I don't think we need to add everything, but we'll figure something out.

How about taking whatever we use, putting it on an eInk Reader and then getting a photo of the screen,cropping as needed?

I was just thinking this, unfortunately I don’t have photo editing skills, but maybe you can JSWolf? I can’t be bothered with paper books any more, too heavy and cumbersome to keep open etc, so I would definitely consider an image with a gadget :)

Me likes gadgets, as you might have noticed from my avatar :)

I can put an image on my H2O, take a photo of it, crop as needed and post. What I think would be good if someone can find or make is a leaf that looks like it's part of a motherboard.

How's this sound...

On top, New Leaf
In the middle, the leaf
On the bottom, Book Club

And if wanted, on the left side a generic Reader and on the right an audio player for audiobooks...

If anyone has an idea for the font to be used, please say.

Do you mean something like getting an old motherboard or similar, and forming it into a leaf shape? Or am I totally misunderstanding?

Mocked up with absolutely no artistic eye (or photography skill), the leaf would have to be bigger and proper leaf shape

Thanks. I was actually wondering more about how the discussions work--e.g., if they're a free-for-all or have a leader, what the rules are for spoilers. But if FAQ and guidelines are coming, I'll just wait.

This shows the advantage of a fresh pair of eyes, as I don't think we address these points!

Discussions are free-for-alls as they stand, but nothing precludes having a leader and indeed, one would be welcome if someone felt attached to a particular book.

Since we will be starting the discussion roughly a month after the selection, the assumption is that the entire book is open for comment, i.e. no spoiler policy relating to that book. However, and I'm speaking personally, I'm a total spoiler-phobe and perhaps we need to address this point for a book in a series. Nothing makes me crazier than saying to someone, "Don't spoil me!" and then they go on to tell me something that I think is a spoiler (I pretty much think everything's a spoiler. ;) ) And yet, I'm willing to take people on faith if they say a book in a series is a standalone, even if it's not the first.

But please, let's not have that argument again!

JSWolf, I think you're making it overly complicated - like a book cover that tries to cram all elements of the story onto a cover that's typically going to be seen in tiny thumbnails. This is MobileRead, is it really necessary to highlight the electronic aspect? It is a book club, so perhaps it's not even necessary for the icon to note that we read books.

I've attached an image of a leaf that I happen to like. I took the photo that this was extracted from, so I have full rights to make it available here. Note: I do use a small version of this image on my website, but it's not like so many people go there that everyone in the world will be sick of this image already.

If someone wants to play with combining this image with an e-reader or whatever, feel free - I hereby give my permission. Note, the attached PNG already has a transparent background, so in theory it should be easy to just drop this on top of another image. I left the attachment at a reasonable size so you can do your own resizing as needed.

If I get around to trying anything, it would probably be just to use a reduced size version of that image directly.

Here is a leaf that may work.

If anyone has anything to say about another book in the same series, I would suggest that it be put in a spoiler code.

I agree, Jon, and as I said, I think everything's a spoiler, even the most obvious inference.

So many leaves from which to choose. I do like Dazrin's designs, so at least for the time being, plan on using one of them. Even though we all read ebooks, the image of a paper book, using a leaf as a bookmark, really appeals to me.

I don't think we have to have uniformity though. The real point is to let people in other parts of MR know about the book club, and hope to interest them enough that they at least come to have a look.

(And having managed to mess up uploading the signature, I'm having another go!)

I do like the simplicity and clean lines of that image. Is it copyright free, if I want to try it?

It came from clipart site. I would think so because the sites that don't alow have a watermark.

The last question of the FAQ has all the images I made and the code that just needs to be copied to your signature of that helps. I am on a phone right now or I would give you a link. I think I posted it up thread though.

I'm confused. Is this a reading club or a photoshop/logo club...? ;)

I didn't do well regarding book club participation in 2017 (only read and reviewed one, I think), but I will get involved in this one in 2018. Cannot promise to participate every time, but will add to my 2018 challenges that I will aim for at least one every quarter (so a minimum of four for the year).

Congrats everybody for floating a new book club! I wish I could take part in club activities but my terribly busy schedule does not permit me at present. Wishing all success to the club! :)

Thanks Dazrin - I think I just forgot to hit the Upload button!

Hello orlok and drjd! We would welcome whatever level of participation you can manage. As issybird said, the more, the merrier.

There are going to be times when the winning book will be one I do not want to read for any number of reasons like too expensive, not able to get from Overdrive in time, just don't want to read that book, etc. But I will try to read more for the book club when possible.

OK, Jon, we're going to do our best to keep prices reasonable and availability high. That said, "just don't want to read that book" is not going to be a legitimate reason not to participate and the Guidelines are explicit on that. If you vote, you're committing yourself to reading the eventual choice if you possibly can. If you're unwilling to read a possible selection, then you're expected to pass on voting; you'd still be more than welcome to participate in the discussion if the choice appealed to you.

Yes, stuff happens and we recognize that. But as with Bruno, there's a difference between "ca'n't" and "wo'n't." And certainly we expect people not to be so rude that they say that they won't read the selection because they "just don't want to." Reading other people's nominations is a courtesy to extend to them in expectation of the same courtesy in return.

So no more voting and then just not bothering? We had too much of some voting and when the winning book won, not all of those who voted for it bothered. That was a problem as we had too many books that were not all that good win when some of those books would not have won.

Correct, Jon. No more "drive-by" voting. We all recognize that for any given month, one might not be able to read the book. But don't make it a habit.

Definitely the logo club. :)

I'm just trying my own variation now. I wish there was a way to have left and right sides as [div] sections, but I think this one works okay ... for now.

I rather like it, gmw. Well done. If this is a Logo club, we've definitely got some good nominations. ;)